"The semiconductor value of a new energy vehicle is twice that of a traditional fuel vehicle. For example, the semiconductor value of a Tesla Model 3 is as high as $1500. Experts said that the automobile electronization rate will gradually increase from 30% to more than 50%, and the penetration rate of automobile electrification and intelligence will continue to increase, which will bring major market opportunities to the automobile semiconductor industry.
Sensors, car eyes, ears
Automobile intelligent driving system consists of perception, decision-making and execution. Among them, perception system is the premise and involves a large number of sensor applications. As the eyes and ears for collecting the data required for intelligent driving, the vehicle sensor converts the information of various working conditions in the vehicle operation into electrical signals and transmits them to the decision-making unit, and finally gives instructions to control the vehicle operation.
Lu Wen Liang, general manager of the automotive industry research center of Sai Di consulting, said that the ultimate goal of automotive intelligence is to achieve automatic driving. Automatic driving system requires more stable, more sensitive and comprehensive sensors.
Automotive sensors can be divided into two categories: environmental monitoring and body sensing. The number of environmental monitoring sensors (including cameras, millimeter wave radars, lidar) required for the operation of the automatic driving system has increased rapidly, occupying the vast majority of the total cost of vehicle sensors.
Lin Yu, deputy investment director of BAIC Industrial Investment Co., Ltd., said in an interview with China Electronics News that multi-sensor fusion has become the future development trend of automatic driving sensors. The reporter learned from Tesla's official website that the standard configuration of a Tesla has 8 cameras, 1 77g millimeter wave radar and 12 ultrasonic radars, which is enough to ensure the basic functions of Tesla L3 level for lane change, merging and high-speed exit. Although we haven't seen the figure of lidar, experts can see at a glance that Tesla's integration of millimeter wave radar and vision reflects the computing power of Tesla's sensor chip.
At present, more than 6000 institutions in about 50 countries around the world are engaged in the R & D and production of sensors. More than 90% of the market share of China's automotive sensors is occupied by international parts enterprises such as Siemens, Bosch and Honeywell. The autopilot platforms of semiconductor suppliers such as Renesas, Infineon and NXP have realized multi-sensor integration of millimeter wave radar, vision, lidar and Internet of vehicles, which can support autopilot above L3 level and ensure excellent computing power while reducing power consumption.
Not long ago, apple, which is fighting in the field of communication equipment, also expressed interest in the next generation of lidar sensors and poached a group of important employees from Tesla and Google under alphabet. It is reported that the autopilot sensor independently developed by Apple can observe the road in three dimensions.
Experts pointed out that in the billion yuan automotive sensor market, most domestic enterprises can only make some low-end products, such as water temperature and pressure sensors, which have not yet formed an independent industry.
In recent years, Chinese enterprises seem to have found a breakthrough to break into the sensor market. Although the stability and reliability of China's ultrasonic radar technology need to be further improved, with cost-effective products and fast and timely services, domestic uPA of Tongzhi electronics, haoen and Audi Wei have successfully entered the procurement catalogue of major automobile manufacturers.
Bai Jie, a professor at Tongji University, believes that millimeter wave radar has become a good cut for Chinese enterprises to further break into the market. Compared with lidar and ultrasonic, the monitoring accuracy is higher and the cost is lower.
The reporter learned that China's millimeter wave radar market has entered a stage of rapid development. As early as 2011, Xiamen Yixing began the research and development of millimeter wave radar front-end RF chip; Enterprises such as xingyidao, Suzhou haomibo and senstec are also in the state of R & D; Shenzhen anzhijie has achieved mass production of 24GHz and 77g products.
In addition, mergers and acquisitions in the sensor field have also begun to appear. Foreign large sensors have completed the first round of mergers and acquisitions, forming their own technical advantages. Domestic sensor enterprises have also begun to enter the track of mergers and acquisitions, which will bring more opportunities for China's sensor enterprises to improve their R & D strength.
Microcontroller, automobile decision-making brain
After receiving the vehicle driving control command collected by the sensor, the decision-making level begins to play an important role. As the core unit of decision-making level, MCU (microcontroller) becomes the brain to analyze data and command the operation of the whole system. Generally speaking, the demand for MCU chips in a single vehicle is about 50, accounting for about 30% of the cost of semiconductor devices in the whole vehicle.
MCU can not only work in the secondary system of the car, but also serve the complex driving system, and provide data processing and control for pre collision, adaptive cruise control and automatic driving system.
Public data show that the compound annual growth rate of the domestic MCU market will reach 11.7%, and the market scale is expected to exceed 50 billion yuan by 2020. At present, the world's top eight MCU manufacturers (including Renesas electronics, NXP, Infineon, microchip, Italy France semiconductor, Samsung, Texas Instruments and cypress) have a market share of 88% in China. Overall, the vast majority of domestic MCU enterprises are still unable to compete with foreign enterprises for market share. For Chinese enterprises, the mainstream market still remains in the 8-bit MCU used in automotive subsystem, accounting for about 50%.
In recent years, China's IOT, 5g, artificial intelligence, edge computing and other rich and diverse new technology ecology are actively "embracing" the MCU market and rekindling its enthusiasm in the field of automotive electronics. Lu Wenliang said that the artificial intelligence algorithm will run and optimize on the embedded MCU platform, which will bring new opportunities to Chinese MCU enterprises.
Zhao Kun, senior expert of the Application Technology Department of Renesas Electronics (China) automotive electronic sales center, said that the automatic driving system has raised the highest standard for processing chips in terms of performance, reliability, real-time performance, power consumption efficiency and corresponding algorithms, which requires the introduction of AI algorithm to vehicle chips.
Chinese enterprises have achieved mass production of chips in this field. According to Wu Zheng, general manager of Shanghai horizon and head of journey chip R & D, the first generation of journey chip of horizon is the first artificial intelligence chip to realize mass production in China. It is planned to launch a new generation of artificial intelligence chip journey 2.0 chip within this year, which integrates the new generation of BPU (brain) independently developed by horizon Processing unit) and visual perception technology are expected to become the first vehicle specification level AI chip in China.
The AI autopilot chip "Lingxin 01" jointly developed by Zero run automobile and Dahua Co., Ltd. has entered the integration verification stage and is expected to be tested in the second quarter of this year.
Power semiconductor, the heart of automobile
At the executive level of the automobile, power semiconductors (also known as power electronic devices) realize power conversion and control in the circuit, and become the heart of providing surging power for the automobile drive system. Public data show that the cost of power devices in new energy vehicles is as high as US $387, accounting for 55% of the semiconductor value of the whole vehicle. Among the new semiconductor costs of new energy vehicles compared with traditional fuel vehicles, the cost of power devices is about US $269, accounting for 76% of the total increased cost.
Lin Yu said that since the power drive and battery pack in new energy vehicles replace the engine and fuel of fuel vehicles, the power equipment in the motor drive system needs a lot of power semiconductors. In traditional fuel vehicles, only a small number of power semiconductors are located in the engine, which is insufficient in volume and function compared with new energy vehicles.
IGBT has become the mainstream technology applied to power semiconductors of new energy vehicles. It helps the voltage source realize low load in the high-voltage system and makes the motor system easy to drive. Lu Wenliang said that IGBT chip accounts for about 7-10% of the whole vehicle cost, which is the second highest cost component except battery. In Tesla's dual motor full drive version, a total of 132 IGBTs are used, with a total value of $650.
For a long time, there has been a significant gap between Chinese power semiconductor enterprises and foreign leading enterprises. Semiconductor enterprises from Europe, America and Japan (including Infineon, Renesas electronics, Fuji Electric, ansenmey, abb, etc.) monopolize more than 70% of the global IGBT market share.
In recent years, the automotive power semiconductor market seems to have a premonition of the spring of "domestic substitution". Zhuzhou CRRC times Electric has outstanding IGBT technology capability. With years of accumulation in the field of power semiconductors, it plans to mass produce the 6th generation IGBT technology chip this year, and the voltage level will cover 650-6500v. In addition, CRRC times Electric has an 8-inch IGBT production line, with an annual output of 240000 pieces.
BYD has laid out the whole IGBT industry chain, including chip design, wafer manufacturing, testing, packaging, new energy vehicle applications, etc. The brand's cars have taken the lead in using self-developed and self-made IGBT products, reflecting BYD's leading advantage in the field of vehicle specification chips. At the beginning of this year, BYD launched the industry-leading automotive power chip igbt4.0 technology, which can help improve the current output capacity by 15% compared with the mainstream IGBT in the current market; Under the same working conditions, the comprehensive loss is reduced by about 20%, realizing a major breakthrough in domestic automobile power IGBT chip, which is expected to accelerate the process of domestic IGBT replacing imported products.
In terms of OEM manufacturing, SMIC acquired an 8-inch production line with experience in automotive semiconductor products through the acquisition of lfoundry company in Italy. Huahong Hongli company has deeply cultivated fs-igbt process products and launched 600V, 1200V, 1700V and other IGBT device processes with a number of cooperative units.
(source: WeChat China official account, China Electronics News)
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